- Big news: California judge: contingency-fee lawyers hired by state present inherent conflict of interest. [POL roundup; Santa Clara v. ARCO]
- Must-read post about Westrup Klick’s fishing for clients in class actions. [Cal Biz Lit; Lattman; Bodner v. Oreck Direct]
- Why not let the market decide the optimum level of securities litigation? [Jim Copland @ NY Sun; AEI event; 10b5 blog; W$J]
- More on subprime mortgages. [Frank @ POL; Michael Lewis @ Bloomberg via Kirkendall]
- Watch what you say about lawyers dept.: Filmmaker complains about lawsuit in memoir, gets sued by former opposing attorney for libel [Ferlauto v. Hamsher @ Don Murphy]
- Update on clinic sperm mixup case [On Point]
- Tunc pro nunc: Justice Roberts is a funny guy [Kerr @ Volokh]
- So is this Arkansas attorney. [Snopes]
- Seven years ago on Overlawyered, Pets.com sues Conan O’Brien show over sock-puppet dogs; ATLA tries to threaten senator. Three years ago: $3M verdict (including punitive damages) for failing to fire truck driver who had speeding tickets; also three years ago, motorcyclist runs from police at 130 mph, crashes, dies, family sues. Two years ago, blogger takes big paycut and gets new job.
Posts Tagged ‘Arkansas’
Saw sex book by mistake; $10K apiece demanded
In Bentonville, Arkansas, Earl Adams says his two teenage boys, ages 14 and 16, were perusing the local library shelves when they accidentally ran across a copy of “The Whole Lesbian Sex Book”, for which traumatization they deserve $10,000 apiece. It happened, Adams said, while they were browsing for material on military academies (titter ye not!) and the shock to their sensibilities from exposure to the “immoral” volume resulted in the boys being “greatly disturbed” and undergoing “many sleepless nights in our house.” According to the Washington Post, Library Journal has deemed the sex guide by Felice Newman suitable for public libraries. (Emil Steiner, “Off/Beat: Arkansas Dad Sues Library Over Lesbian Book”, Washington Post, Apr. 25; “Father Says Sons Traumatized By Lesbian Library Book”, 365gay.com, Apr. 20).
Update: Mysterious Wal-Mart suit
On Nov. 3, 2005, I wrote:
One can understand why Wal-Mart is upset that a former executive, Tom Coughlin, allegedly swiped a half-million dollars, and wants to stop paying him in addition to referring the matter to federal prosecutors. But one doesn’t understand why Wal-Mart, in an effort to recover a fairly small sum, is arguing to the court that it should disregard the mutual waiver and release that Coughlin signed with Wal-Mart when he left the job. Surely the corporation would be better off on the whole with a legal rule that strictly enforces releases than one that judges the validity of a release on a case-by-case basis.
(See also.) Coughlin has since pled guilty to fraud, was sentenced to 27 months of home confinement, and ordered to pay $400,000 restitution. Yesterday, the Arkansas Supreme Court unanimously held that that Wal-Mart’s suit to recover retirement benefits can go forward on a theory that the release was fraudulently induced, notwithstanding the language in the release that both parties waived all claims, “known and unknown.” (cross-posted at Point of Law)
“FBI Probing Edwards Senate Campaign Donor”
We told you the continuing Paul Minor imbroglio in Mississippi (Mar. 16 and many other posts) was going to be worth watching:
[In recent weeks] four former fundraising aides to [former Sen. John] Edwards have spoken voluntarily to FBI agents.
Democrats familiar with the investigation said that neither the current or past Edwards campaigns nor any of his staffers appear to be targets of the investigation, which is trying to determine whether Minor reimbursed his children for $8,000 in contributions to Edwards, an illegal practice known as “conduiting.” …
Trial lawyers are a fixture of Democratic politics and fundraising, particularly in the South, but some also have a reputation in Democratic political circles for a freewheeling approach to campaign finance law. Within Edwards’ 2004 campaign, staffers referred to those flamboyant personalities by an acronym: They called them “DFTLs,” which according to former staffers was short for “dirty (expletive) trial lawyers.”
“No current staffer for John Edwards for President uses that kind of language to talk about our donors,” said Kate Bedingfield, campaign spokeswoman.
(Ben Smith, The Politico, Mar. 21). I mentioned Minor’s prominence among Edwards’ presidential donors in this 2004 W$J piece. And as Ted noted on Jun. 24 of last year the Federal Election Commission has fined the law firm of prominent Arkansas plaintiff’s attorney Tab Turner, as well as the Edwards 2004 presidential campaign itself, over Turner’s having unlawfully funneled money to the campaign in the guise of contributions by employees at his firm (see Apr. 28-29, 2003).
Don’t let the lawyers bite
An Arkansas woman staying at a hotel claims she was bitten by bed bugs. Certainly grounds to demand a refund, if true. Or, you could claim to be traumatized by the experience, and file a lawsuit. Mental anguish, embarrassment and humiliation? Is that it? Couldn’t they pile on any more claims from a few bug bites?
Update: Sudden acceleration: litigation springs eternal
In 1995, 70-year old Marlene Fett pressed the wrong pedal on her Lincoln Town Car, and smashed into a carousel in front of an Arkansas Wal-Mart, killing one boy and severely injuring his brother. The Chapman family settled with Fett, and blamed Wal-Mart and Ford, Wal-Mart on a theory that it should have anticipated the possibility of a car hitting a merry-go-round at 30 mph, and Ford on that old plaintiffs’ lawyer claim of “sudden acceleration,” a “defect” that somehow is six times more likely to strike elderly drivers. The case made the front page of USA Today in 2004 (resulting in an Apr. 19, 2004 Overlawyered story), though the newspaper kindly noted the lack of science behind the claim:
Little Rock attorney Sandy McMath, who is representing the Chapmans, says the Town Car’s cruise control put Fett on a “rocket ship to Mars” after she pulled out of her parking place. He petitioned NHTSA to investigate what he says is a defect in Ford and Lincoln models’ cruise control that causes the accelerator to stick.
In a lengthy 1999 [sic] report denying McMath’s petition, NHTSA investigator Bob Young wrote that even if such an occurrence took place and didn’t leave evidence of a mechanical malfunction, the situation should be reproducible through in-vehicle and laboratory tests. None of NHTSA’s testing could do so.
The Wal-Mart theory was similarly bogus, and refuted when an expert demonstrated that the plaintiffs’ proposed safety measure wouldn’t have stopped the speeding car. (For Illinois’ take on premises liability for auto accidents: Jun. 23.) An Arkansas jury also rejected the claims, and, after years of litigation, now the Arkansas Supreme Court has affirmed that decision in a not-especially-interesting Dec. 14 opinion, Chapman v. Ford Motor Co. Wal-Mart and Ford are still out the hundreds of thousands of dollars they spent defending themselves in the lottery litigation, not to mention the cost of bad publicity from sudden acceleration claims and quacks like the Center for Auto Safety trumpeting a non-existent problem. Arkansas acquits itself better than a South Carolina federal court did in a story we covered Aug. 7.
Novel idea: don’t sue without actual harm
“A federal judge in Arkansas has thrown out a class action lawsuit against Acxiom, which exposed massive amounts of Americans’ personal information in a high-profile Internet security snafu three years ago. … Because the class action attorneys could not prove that anyone’s information had actually been misused, [U.S. District Judge William] Wilson dismissed the case and the request for damages on the grounds that any harm would be entirely speculative.” (Declan McCullagh, “Class action suit over ID theft tossed out”, CNet, Oct. 12).
“Something which I would consider akin to child abuse”
For California state senator Deborah Ortiz, that would describe smoking in a car in which a child is present. Writes Brooke Oberwetter at CEI Open Market (Jun. 29): “According to the Contra Costa Times, smokers can be fined under [a bill approved by the committee Ortiz chairs] even if the car is parked and on private property. Clearly California is just a cigarette’s flick away from suggesting banning smoking in private homes: If they can tell you what you can and cannot do in the driveway, is there really much left in terms of precedent to stop them from stepping gingerly up to the front porch and peering in the windows?” A similar bill has already passed the California assembly. (Edwin Garcia, “Bill targets smokers with children”, Contra Costa Times, Jun. 29; Michael Siegel, Jun. 29). Earlier coverage: May 1 and links from there. On the follies of GOP governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, who promoted a similar measure in that state, see The Agitator, Jun. 9.
Arkansas court: bus company not liable for lack of seatbelts
Update: $9,500 fine for Edwards campaign finance violations
The Federal Election Commission has fined an Arkansas law firm for making illegal contributions to John Edwards’ 2004 presidential campaign. Tab Turner solicited four $2,000 contributions from his co-workers at Little Rock law firm Turner & Associates in January 2003 and illegally reimbursed them for their contributions using a company credit card, according to the FEC. He also used a company credit card to make an illegal campaign contribution in his own name and to pay for various campaign expenses. Federal law prohibits donors from making contributions in others’ names and prohibits direct corporate contributions to a federal candidate. Edwards for President also agreed to pay a $9,500 fine, and called the commission’s announcement “old news,” reported the AP.
We covered the laundering story Apr. 28, 2003.
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Clarifying note by W.O. [editor], Jan. 25, 2014: This archival post has drawn reader interest in light of more recent straw-donor enforcement controversies. It is worth noting that while the Edwards campaign paid only a $9,500 civil fine for accepting the illegal contributions, the lawyer and law firm that arranged the donations paid a larger fine of $50,000, several times the size of the original contributions, in a civil (not criminal) penalty.